Sunday, March 06, 2011

"The one thing that absolutely could not be tolerated was true freedom, the liberty of the individual. For Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the “social compact” would otherwise be “an empty formula.” The irreducible core of the utopia he envisioned, the “undertaking which alone can give force to the rest,” was quite simply this: “Whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be compelled to do so by the whole body.”

Ah, yes, the “general will.” For this, every modern totalitarian movement is indebted to the 18th-century Genevan philosopher who claimed, in The Social Contract, that a man’s compulsory servitude to the state — the embodiment of this general will — “means nothing less than that he will be forced to be free.” Rousseau was what we today call “Orwellian” long before there was an Orwell. “Freedom” was nothing more than submission."

The February jobs report was a solid report — not quite a champagne-popping event, merely one more indicator that the recovery is on firm ground and job gains will continue in future reports. While a decline of 0.1 in the unemployment rate is statistically insignificant, it indicates that the rather sharp declines of 0.4 in both December and January were more than just a statistical blip. It is still likely that the unemployment rate will rise slightly as workers re-enter the labor force, but it would be surprising to see the rate leaping back over 9.5 percent.

There are indications that some of the anemic payroll-survey numbers from January were weather-related. The job gains in construction and transportation are more likely due to a bounce back from the weather rather than attributable to true growth.

While the February job gains of 222,000 is a good start, job growth needs to be much stronger to make up for the labor slack since December 2007. Hopefully, future reports will show over 300,000 new private-sector workers. The household survey shows that the number of employed workers is about 10 million below where it should be to return to the same level of employment before the recession began. At the rate of last month’s job growth, it would take seven years for the labor market to fully recover, a time period that is simply too long.

HELP!

Has the GOP abandoned us?

What would Ronnie say?

Government's view of the economycould be summed up in a few shortphrases:If it moves,tax it.If it keeps moving,regulate it.And if it stops moving,subsidize it.-- Ronald Reagan"We've gone astray from first principles. We've lost sight of the rulethat individual freedom and ingenuity are at the very core of everythingthat we've accomplished. Government's first duty is to protect the people,not run their lives." ---Ronald Reagan (http://Reagan2020.US/)

the best one-liner ever

right links

election quotes

"Vote for the man who promises least; he'll be the leastdisappointing." ---Bernard Baruch

"In order to become the master, the politician poses as theservant." ---Charles de Gaulle

"If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he wouldpromise them missionaries for dinner." ---H. L. Mencken

"We'd all like to vote for the best man but he's never a candidate." ---KinHubbard

LGF headlines

What would Ronnie do?

Bobby Jindal, the new Reagan?

if I were aliberal Democrat from a bluestate, I’d want to stop lookingback at Reagan, too. But asconservatives, we should look tohim as a great leader and a greatexample of the success we canenjoy by going back to ourprinciples. Take Louisiana. Thestorms didn’t cause all theproblems for Louisiana; theyrevealed a lot of the problems. Itis frustrating to see Republicansrush in to put billions of dollarsinto the same programs thatdidn’t work before the storms,instead of being more bold. Webelieve that private health carecoverage, not government-runhealth care, works. Why notimplement that, now thatwe’ve got such an opportunityto rebuild the health careinfrastructure?